A straightforward, helpful guide for families struggling with a child’s ability to make their own way.
A clinical psychologist analyzes the widespread problem of people “struggling with adolescent to adult transitions.”
The trajectory of most American teens is to finish high school, attend college or get a steady job, and launch into the world, standing on their own. However, as McConville (Adolescence: Psychotherapy and the Emergent Self, 1995, etc.)—who has a private practice and is a senior faculty member at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland—shows in this apt analysis, many young adults don’t follow this path and wind up back home with their parents, unable to hold a job, maintain a steady relationship, or thrive in a higher education program. The author points out that teens are more anxious and “worry more and risk less” now than in any previous generation, and he rightly suggests that parents must avoid the temptation to micromanage every decision in their child’s life. McConville uses numerous case studies to back up his primary argument that there are three key reasons why this “failure to launch” trend is happening: Young adults don’t know how to assume responsibility for themselves and their actions; they lack supportive relationships; and they can’t locate a sense of hope and purpose regarding their future. Once McConville breaks down these three elements, he provides readers with practical scenarios that demonstrate how others have worked through these situations to become more well-rounded and -adjusted young adults. The author believes parents need to look at their own parenting behaviors and begin treating their children as the adults they want to be by allowing them to have their own ideas, values, and priorities that are separate from the parents. McConville concludes with a section addressed to the “struggling transitioner,” which focuses on one main message: “If you want your parents to stay out of your business, you have to learn to manage your business in a way that doesn’t require them to get involved.”
A straightforward, helpful guide for families struggling with a child’s ability to make their own way.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-54218-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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